


an emotion; bent out of shape

by cdocks



Category: Mama (2013)
Genre: Animal Abuse, Dark, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-02
Updated: 2013-11-02
Packaged: 2017-12-31 05:29:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,053
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1027774
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cdocks/pseuds/cdocks
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Victoria has all this and a hole inside her shaped like Lilly and she doesn't even have a body to mourn." -- pre- & post-movie Victoria-centric fic. Warnings for animal abuse, death and some violence. -- fandom is Mama, the 2013 film.</p>
            </blockquote>





	an emotion; bent out of shape

Victoria is three almost four and she has a baby sister. She's the shortest girl in her preschool and she has the longest hair and she's one of three kids who wear glasses. The other two are boys, which makes Victoria – never Vicky – one of a kind; the shortest glasses-wearing student in Ms. Elmer's preschool class. With a baby sister.

Mommy says she's already one of a kind, that she was born precious and special and unique and perfect, from the tips of her toes to the top of her head. Daddy says that too, on the days he's there, and Victoria can climb up onto his lap and breathe in the smell of cigars and soap and clean white printer paper. Daddy isn't there much – Victoria thinks he might've been around all the time, long long time ago, once upon a time when Mommy stayed home all day too, when there was no quiet, solemn Lilly with her big big eyes and her way of fitting just against Victoria's side, like a puzzle piece.

Mommy doesn't fit like that, sharp under her smooth silky clothes, and Daddy doesn't fit either, because he's always moving, always kissing her cheek and walking out the door. Hansel won't fit, but that's because he's a dog, wriggly and long and yappy when Victoria hugs him too tight.

But Lilly fits, tucked under Victoria's arm, sharing her seatbelt while Daddy takes the turns too fast, when he snarls and sobs in the front seat, when the wheels stop turning and screech like angry birds against the ice, when the world flips inside-out and upside down and sideways, like cat's cradle during storytime, like a snowglobe dropped from high up, like the splinter of Victoria's glasses against her face, like the starburst of blood on her brow that drips and drips and clots and scabs.

Lilly gives her clumsy baby kisses, wet and sticky from the cherries rolled from the darkness, warm in the light of the fire where they sit awake, all night, waiting for Daddy to come back.

He doesn't, and Victoria doesn't cry.

* * *

 

Victoria is four almost five and that makes Lilly two. When her friend's little sister Janie (Jamie, Jessie, Jackie, something, something) was two, she was laughing and walking and trying to run and she could throw a ball and read a picture book and she never ever stopped talking.

But Lilly, Lilly covered in mud, Lilly with her mouth full of grass and leaves and moths and cherry pits, Lilly doesn't even try to stand anymore.

Lilly crouches and runs, Lilly leaps on Victoria and growls like the baby foxes that play outside the cabin, Lilly only says her first two words, “Victoria” and “no”, sometimes so quick and often it turns into one word, “ _novictorianonononono_ ”. Lilly snaps like an angry cornered rat when Victoria tries to pull her up, help her walk, so Victoria sinks to hands and feet, spine curled like a bow, knobby scabby knees up by her ears. There's no Mommy to tell them to get off the table and there's no Daddy to yell at them for being so loud, so Lilly and Victoria prowl and pounce and snarl through cherry stems stuck in their teeth.

Sometimes there's another growl joining theirs, but Victoria tries not to think about that. Her world has been blurry for so long, edges blending one into the other, and she can still pretend that the cold fingers untangling her hair while she sleeps are just her nightmares. Victoria can dream of running and falling and bloody bloody hands and she can still wake up and not understand what's real.

But one day Lilly pounces on a raccoon instead of her sister, and raccoons don't care if you're only two, raccoons bite down and even Victoria's bad eyes can see all that blood, so much, spilling over her hands and not stopping no matter how loud her sister screams.

“Mommy, mommy, mommy!” Victoria howls to the dark dark sky, tears on her face and falling on Lilly's pale and bloody one. She wails and wails for her mother, the sound becoming a primal, agonized sound – _mommy mom mom ma ma mamamama_ – until those cold hands are back and they take Lilly up and away and everything is quiet and dark and still.

There's no bad dream this time, only the warmth of a new fire and Lilly sleeping peaceful and whole by Victoria's side and the tickle of a moth on her cheek when she wakes up again.

Lilly's third word is “Mama”.

* * *

 

Victoria is six or seven or a hundred thousand and she doesn't care anymore. Once that might've mattered, once there were things like birthday presents and party dresses. Once morning's were school and tennis shoes and breakfast cereal and nights were cuddled between thick blankets. Once upon a time there were two little girls named Lilly and Victoria who lived with their mommy and daddy, but those girls got gobbled up a long time ago.

Now the moon shines down on the lake, while two little monsters catch fish with their bare hands, tearing into them with their teeth, clothed in mud and blood and wildflowers. Now the mornings are them chasing deer through the forest, hiding in the shadows to leap out and scare the rabbits, while at night they climb up, up, up to the roof and reach for the moon with their long scraggly nails.

The girl who was Victoria remembers when she used to cry over the dead raccoons left torn apart on their doorsteps. She remembers when she used to cover her eyes when the walls split and cracked and opened up. She remembers wishing for someone to find them and take them back to carpets and convertibles and birthday candles.

The girl who used to be Lilly hunches, staring at a moth on the wall, mouth open slack and full of chewed-up cherries. The moth becomes two, three, a hundred thousand and then long crooked fingers are reaching out for the girls and in the blurriness that once-Victoria knows and welcomes, with the sound of used-to-be-Lilly's hoarse giggle in her ears, Mama is the most beautiful thing she's ever seen.

Her cold dirty hands tangle in the long grey strands of Mama's hair, her skinny bruised body curls in closer to her sister when Mama closes her bright bright eyes and growl-sings them to sleep and it's better than birthday cake and she hopes they're never found.

The men come to the cabin the next day.

* * *

 

Victoria is eight, almost nine and she doesn't have a sister anymore. She has an Uncle Luke and an Annabel and she has an old dachshund named Hansel who is too tired and fat to even bark at the mailman anymore. Victoria has a dollhouse and two bookshelves and a new haircut for the first day of school. Victoria has soccer practice on Thursdays, piano on Monday afternoon and every other week Uncle Luke takes the whole family out to a movie or a show or to a park, as long as it's a small park, not too many trees, not too much like the woods.

Victoria has Annabel who still wakes up screaming. Victoria has a front yard with neat tiny shrubs that won't rustle or creak like old forest trees do. Victoria has an uncle who watches her so closely and carefully, like he's waiting for her to fly away. Victoria has all this and a hole inside her shaped like Lilly and she doesn't even have a body to mourn.

“She died,” is what she tells the teachers and her classmates and her new therapist, a lady who's soft and gentle and doesn't ask about why Victoria draws pictures of her family and includes her sister and her mama. “She died because my great-aunt Jean and a doctor took her away,” is the only story that makes sense, that explains the disappearance of all three in a way that doesn't invite questioning. At first the police suspected Uncle Luke and Annabel, asked Victoria what happened to her sister. Victoria drew pictures of blue butterflies and didn't answer and eventually they gave up.

So the three of them moved to another city, another house, one with wallpaper so crisp and firm that nothing could ever break through it. Annabel hangs up flypaper to catch any small insects and Uncle Luke loses his temper for the first time when Victoria asks if they can keep one of the cardboard boxes for her to play in. She's too old for that now, he snaps, loud and sharp like Daddy used to, and the box gets crushed down and thrown out with the rest of the trash. Honestly Victoria wouldn't have played, wouldn't have touched the box – just kept it in her room with a blanket inside, just in case, the same way she still sleeps with one arm hanging down over the edge of her bed. Just in case.

Victoria gets new pink glasses that make everything crystal clear. She can see the shadows under her eyes and the grey in Uncle Luke's hair and every leaf in the tree she climbs on the way to and from school. Things still look better to her when she takes the glasses off, though – softer, gentler, like sweet spring cherries.

When Annabel screams or cries in the middle of the night, Victoria takes the glasses off to make her sweeter too.

* * *

 

Victoria is thirteen and Aunt Annabel – she's an aunt now, with a ring on her finger and her eyes make-up-free – sits her down to talk about the facts of life, to talk about blood and growing up and “becoming a woman”. Victoria sits and listens and doesn't mention the way blood felt between her teeth when she tore it hot and pumping and nourishing at the encouragement of a ghost. She doesn't talk about how all the women she's known died alone – shot and fallen and sucked dry. She doesn't talk about how half of her grew up when she was three years old and the other half died with Lilly.

Instead, Victoria grows her hair long and braids it with flowers. Victoria sings growling lullabies to the moon. Victoria hides in her closet and drags her long scraggly nails down the wallpaper and whispers for her baby sister while her aunt and uncle sleep.

While the entire world spins on and pretends that nothing lurks in the darkness under their beds or the darkness behind their eyes, Victoria seeks out the shadowy places where worms crawl and the scent of soil is thick and she can close her eyes and curl up in that smell and in the memory of what fell from the cliff that night. She can feel Lilly's cold fingertips on her cheek and the wind is singing Mama's lullaby and all Uncle Luke and Aunt Annabel do is fight and fight and fight, screaming about money and their jobs and her, accusing each other of forgetting to lock the windows the night before.

So Victoria saves pennies and dimes and buys a bus ticket back to Richmond, back to the woods and she walks and walks and walks until her feet ache and she kicks her shoes off and leaves them by the side of the road. Her coat and socks follow, her jeans get torn in the brambles, her skin bleeds from a thousand tiny cuts when she stumbles and falls and gets back up again, fighting her way towards the lake and the cliff and LillyLilly _LillyMama._

Of course they're waiting and Victoria wonders why she ever doubted. Lilly's soft golden hair tickles her cheek when they run towards each other and meet and clutch and cling, two puzzle pieces reunited after so long. She doesn't remember why she wanted to stay away, why she chose English class and pierced ears and hamburgers over the other half of herself. All she knows is that Lilly is sobbing her name again and again and Mama is gentle and beautiful and smiling over them, Mama or the moon or both or neither, just them, just Victoria and Lilly holding on tight and silent.

When the sun rises, they watch it together, hands entwined.


End file.
